Ever since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron have emphasized the continued importance of strong defense and security relationships after Brexit.

Six weeks after the EU and the U.S. expelled more than 100 Russian diplomats in response to the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy on British soil, and following the first military action of both May and Macron’s premierships, May has evidence to support the Frenchman’s reassuring rhetoric.

One senior U.K. government official close to May said the military alliance forged between May and Macron at January’s Sandhurst summit has been transformed in the heat of battle over the past two weeks.

The return of good France-U.K. defense relations was welcomed across the Channel.

“One of the things Macron has always been very keen on since they had their first meeting was to focus the relationship on security and defense,” the senior official said. “Salisbury and Syria have given more substance to that — he has made it play out in practice.”

May’s closest aides believe this also bodes well for Brexit. “It shows Europe, and France in particular, what a good security relationship with Britain looks like,” the official said.

May and Macron spoke twice in the week running up to the airstrikes and once again in the hours after they had taken place. Officials in Paris and London also spoke “multiple times a day,” ferrying top-secret documents too sensitive to brief over the phone to each other’s embassies, according to diplomatic officials.

A joint position between Paris and London was established early on, while the U.S. administration was split between the ultra-hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, and the more cautious Defense Secretary James Mattis over how extensive the strikes should be, diplomats said.

The French and British jointly pushed for “limited” strikes aimed exclusively at degrading the Assad regime’s chemical weapons capability — and won.

Macron and May, during a bilateral meeting at San Domenico Palace Hotel in Taormina, Italy | Dan Kitwood-Pool/Getty Images

Peter Ricketts, a former British ambassador to France, said: “The French and the British united around Mattis, who has been the central pillar of U.S. foreign policy on this. The prime minister found the center of gravity. That’s where the British machine was pushing and that’s where the government got to.”

Macron-Trump bromance

The return of good France-U.K. defense relations was welcomed across the Channel.

It also comes just as French frustration at Germany’s lukewarm adoption of Macron’s EU reform proposals — as well as Berlin’s inability to step up on the world stage — is beginning to mount.

“In the area of defense, relations between Paris and London are naturally fluid while they are restricted and unsatisfactory with Berlin,” one French diplomat told Le Figaro.

However, officials in Paris said the U.K.’s involvement in Syria was “a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have.”

Internationally, May also risks becoming the third leg in the transatlantic alliance, as the budding bromance between U.S. President Donald Trump and Macron continues apace.

Those involved in crafting May’s Syria policy said hers is essentially a “reactive, not proactive approach.”

Macron was quick to claim credit for convincing Trump to act in Syria, in an interview with French TV the following day. Next week, Trump will host the French president for a state visit, an honor not yet granted to the British prime minister.

The U.K.’s continuing travails extricating itself from the European Union continue to cause alarm on the Continent. French officials said Brexit appears to be sucking up much of London’s time and energy and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future as talks grind to a near-halt over the Irish border.

Domestically, however, U.K. government ministers say May’s understated approach to the Salisbury spy poisoning and Syrian gas attack has played well with the British public, which is tired of alpha-male foreign policy.

“Macron’s playing the Gaullist and that’s all right — that’s what French presidents do,” said one minister who is close to May. “The PM is using the fact that there are these two big egos to her advantage. She’s undemonstrative, steady as you go. The fact that she’s not a Blair or a Cameron helps.”

Global Britain?

The biggest risk for the British prime minister, according to her ministers and advisers, is that she fails to capitalize on the two crises because she is unable to formulate a long-term foreign policy strategy that sets out how Britain sees its role in the world after Brexit.

Those closest to May also insist it is unfair to say her approach to foreign policy is purely ad-hoc, pointing to the prime minister’s speech to the Republican Party conference in Philadelphia in January 2017 as the intellectual ballast holding her strategy together.

In the speech, May said the days of Britain and the U.S. “intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image” were over and that military action should be reserved to defend the international order.

Trump steps off Air Force One | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Yet those involved in crafting May’s Syria policy said hers is essentially a “reactive, not proactive approach,” which means acting only when international law is broken and not for any other wider objectives.

May is fond of telling aides that she has little time for grand visions or strategies, one former adviser said. “She often says she just gets on with the job, putting one foot in front of the other.”

“There are costs to her approach as well as some benefits,” one of her closest allies said. “Governing does require an overarching narrative and it is actually quite difficult to maintain one at the best of times.”

Some ministers close to May were more caustic. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one said: “Trade deals are no substitute for a vision.”

Jonathan Eyal from the London-based foreign policy think tank RUSI said it is okay in the short term for May to “bump along” reacting to world events, but eventually she will need to set out her vision if she wants to be treated as a reliable partner.

“It cannot just be small steps,” he said. “It still requires the big speech, the big vision. She will need to answer the question: ‘What is Britain’s role?’ She cannot escape this question.”

Priscilla du Bleu

“….critics say May lacks a foreign policy vision.”

Oh, i wouldn’t say that, she certainly has ‘foreign policy visions’, as in Empire 2.0. However, quoting a German politician i have always admired, Alt-Kanzler Helmut Schmidt (RIP, hopefully – for you and my late uncle Joseph – smoking has not been banned in heaven): ‘Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen.’

Steuersklav Erei

How can the UK be lacking a foreign policy vision? I am reliably and repeatedly told by EUphiles on this site that Brexit is all about ‘British Empire 2.0’. Can Politico publish some news on what this will mean in practice please? Will the UK be reintroducing slavery, sending gunboats to China, etc.?

Also, this report on closer UK-France military cooperation must be false. I am reliably and repeatedly told by EUphiles that Brexit is all about ‘British Empire 2.0’, and I don’t think this could involve an alliance with another ex-empire.

Posted on 4/20/18 | 9:15 AM CEST

cinc eur

@Steuersklav

Sarcasm not withstanding, that would be because you rise to the bait too easily (see above for an example of ‘bait’).

Posted on 4/20/18 | 3:39 PM CEST

Priscilla du Bleu

Good morning, Jack wixxerchen :-D. Since Chancellor Merkel – as opposed to the maybutt* – has no nationalsocialist tendencies at all —- other than in your little brekkiebrain, that is —- i shall chose her politics over the maybutt’s non-existent empire 2.0 any given day :-D.

*The UKIP was literally eliminated by the Tories sucking up the kippers’ alt-right voters, so if any government at present is closer to nazism (other than the drumpf, austria, hungary) – it’s the present tories under the maybutt.